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How to Read Music

How to
Read Music

Written music is a language that has been
developing for thousands of years, and even the music we read today has been
around for over 300 years. Music notation is the representation of sound with
symbols, from basic notations for pitch, duration, and timing, to more advanced
descriptions of expression, timbre, and even special effects. This article will
introduce you to the basics of reading music, show you some more advanced
methods, and suggest some ways to gain more knowledge about the subject.

Part1

The Basics

1Get a handle on the staff.Before you are
ready to start learning music, you must get a sense for the basic information
that virtually everyone who reads music needs to know. The horizontal lines on
a piece of music make up the staff. This is the most basic of all
musical symbols and the foundation for everything that is to follow.

·The staff is an arrangement of five parallel lines, and the spaces between
them. Both lines and spaces are numbered for reference purposes, and are always
counted from lowest (bottom of the staff) to highest (top of the staff).

2Start with the Treble Clef.One of the first
things you'll encounter when reading music is the clef. This sign,
which looks like a big, fancy cursive symbol at the left end of the staff, is
the legend that tells you approximately what range your instrument will play
in. All instruments and voices in the higher ranges use the treble clef, and
for this intro to reading music, we'll focus primarily on this clef for our
examples.

·The Treble Clef, or G Clef, is derived from an ornamental Latin letter G.
One good way to remember this is that the line at the center of the clef's
"swirl" represents the note G. When notes are added to the staff in
the treble clef, they will have the following values:

·The five lines, from the bottom up, represent the following notes: E G B D
F.

·The four spaces, from the bottom up, represent these notes: F A C E.

·This may seem like a lot to remember, but you can use mnemonics—or word
cues—that may help you remember them. For the lines, "Every Good Boy Does
Fine" is one popular mnemonic, and the spaces spell out the word
"FACE." Practicing with an online note recognition tool is another
great way to reinforce these associations.

3Understand the Bass Clef. The bass clef,
also known as the F clef, is used for instruments in the lower registers,
including the left hand of the piano, bass guitar, trombone, and so on.

·The name "F clef" derives from its origins as the Gothic letter
F. The two dots on the clef lie above and below the "F" line on the
staff. The staff of the bass clef represents different notes than that of the
treble clef.

4Learn the parts of a note. Individual note
symbols are a combination of up to three basic elements: the note head, the
stem, and flags.

·The note head. This is an oval shape that is either
open (white) or closed (black). At its most basic, it tells the performer what
note to play on their instrument.

·The stem. This is the thin vertical line that is
attached to the note head. When the stem is pointing up, it joins on the right
side of the note head. When the stem is pointing down, it joins the note head
on the left. The direction of the stem has no effect on the note, but it makes
notation easier to read and less cluttered.

·The general rule on stem direction is that at or above the center line of
the staff, the stem points down, and when the note is below the middle of the
staff, the stem points up.

·The flag. This is the curved stroke that is
attached to the end of the stem. No matter if the stem is joined to the right
or left of the note head, the flag is always drawn to the
right of the stem, and never to the left!

·Taken together, the note, stem, and flag or flags show the musician the
time value for any given note, as measured in beats or fractions of beats. When
you listen to music, and you're tapping your foot in time to the music, you're
recognizing that beat.

Part2

Meter and Time

1Learn about measure lines. On a piece of
sheet music, you will see thin vertical lines crossing the staff at fairly
regular intervals. These lines represent measures — the space
before the first line is the first measure, the space between the first and
second lines is the second measure, and so on. Measure lines don't affect how
the music sounds, but they help the performer keep their place in the music.

·As we'll see below, another handy thing about measures is that each
one gets the same number of beats. For example, if you find yourself
tapping "1-2-3-4" along to a piece of music on the radio, you've
probably subconsciously found the measure lines already.

2Learn about timing, or meter.Meter can be
generally thought of as the "pulse" or the beat of music. You feel it
instinctively when you listen to dance or pop music — the "boom, tiss,
boom, tiss" of a stereotypical dance track is a simple example of meter.

·On a piece of sheet music, the beat is expressed by something that looks
like a fraction written next to the first clef symbol. Like any fraction, there
is a numerator, and a denominator. The numerator, written in the top two spaces
of the staff, tells you how many beats there are in one measure. The
denominator tells you the note value that receives one beat (the "pulse"
that you tap your toe to).

·Perhaps the easiest meter to understand is 4/4 time, or "common"
time. In 4/4 time, there are four beats in each measure and each quarter note
is equal to one beat. This is the time signature you'll hear in most popular
music. You can count along to common time music by counting "ONE two three
four ONE two three four..." to the beat.

·By changing the numerator, we change the number of beats in a measure.
Another very common time signature is 3/4. For example, most waltzes will have
a steady "ONE two three ONE two three" beat, making them in 3/4 time.

·Some meters will be shown with a letter C instead of two numbers. 4/4 time
is often shown as a big C, which stands for Common time. Likewise, 2/2 meter is
often shown as a big C with a vertical line through it. The C with the line
through it stands for Cut time.

·

Part3

Rhythm

1Get in the groove.Similar to meter
and time, "rhythm" is a crucial part of how the music feels. However,
whereas meter simply tells you how many beats, rhythm is how those beats are
used.

·Try this: tap your finger on your desk, and count 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4,
steadily. Not very interesting, is it? Now try this: on beats 1 and 3, tap
louder, and on beats 2 and 4, tap softer. That's got a different feel to it!
Now try the reverse: tapping loud on 2 and 4, and soft on beats 1 and 3.

·Check out Regina Spektor's Don't Leave Me. You can
clearly hear the rhythm: the quieter bass note happens on beat 1 and beat 3,
and a loud clap and snare drum happens on beats 2 and 4. You'll start to get a
sense of how music is organized. That's what we call rhythm!

2Imagine yourself walking.Each footstep
will equal one beat. Those are represented musically by quarter notes, because
in much of Western music (meaning music of the western world, not just the
music of Hank Williams!), there are four of these beats for every measure.
Musically, the rhythm of your walking will look like this:

·Each step is one quarter note. On a sheet of music, quarter notes are the
solid black dots attached to stems without any flags. You can count that off as
you walk: "1, 2, 3, 4-1, 2, 3, 4"

·If you were to slow your pace down to half that speed, so that you only
took a step every two beats on the 1 and on the 3, that would be notated with
half notes (for half a measure). On a sheet of music, half notes look like
quarter notes, only they aren't solid black — they are outlined in black with
white centers.

·If you slowed your pace down even further, so that you only took a step
every four beats, on the 1, you would write that as a whole note—or one note
per measure. On a sheet of music, whole notes look like "Os" or
donuts — similar to half notes without stems.

3Pick up the pace! Enough of this
slowing down. As you noticed, as we slowed the notes down, we started taking
away bits of the note. First we took away the solid note, then we took away the
stem. Now let's look at speeding things up. To do that, we're going to add
things to the note.

·Go back to our walking tempo, and picture that in your mind (tapping your
foot to the beat can help). Now imagine that your bus has just pulled up to the
stop, and you're about a block away. What do you do? You run! And as you run,
you try to flag the bus driver.

·To make notes faster in music, we add a flag. Each flag cuts the time value
of the note in half. For example, an eighth note (which gets one flag) is 1/2
the value of a quarter note; and a 16th note (which gets two flags) is 1/2 the
value of an eighth note. In terms of walking, we go from a walk (quarter note)
to a run (8th note)—twice as fast as a walk, to a sprint (16th note)—twice as
fast as a run. Thinking in terms of each quarter note being a step as you walk,
tap along with the example above.

4Beam me up!As you can see
with that above example, things can start to get a little confusing when there
are a bunch of notes on the page like that. Your eyes start to cross, and you
lose track of where you were. To group notes into smaller packages that make
sense visually, we use beaming.

·Beaming merely replaces individual note flags with thick lines drawn between
note stems. These are grouped logically, and while more complex music requires
more complex beaming rules, for our purposes, we'll generally beam in groups of
quarter notes. Compare the example below with the example above. Try tapping
out the rhythm again, and see how much clearer beaming makes the notation.

5Learn the value of ties and dots.Where a flag
will cut the value of a note in half, the dot has a similar—but
opposite—function. With limited exceptions that do not come into play here, the
dot is always placed to the right of the note head. When you see a dotted note,
that note is increased by one half the length of its original value.

·For example, a dot placed after a half note will be equal to the half note
plus a quarter note. A dot placed after a quarter note will be equal to a
quarter note plus an eighth note.

·Ties are similar to dots—they extend the value of the original note. A tie
is simply two notes linked together with a curved line between the note heads.
Unlike dots, which are abstract and based wholly on the value of the original
note, ties are explicit: the note is increased in length by exactly as long as
the second note value.

·One reason you would use a tie versus a dot is, for example, when a note's
duration would not fit musically into the space of a measure. In that case, you
simply add the leftover duration into the next measure as a note, and tie the
two together.

·Note that the tie is drawn from note head to note head, generally in the
opposite direction as the stem.

6Take a rest.Some say music
is just a series of notes, and they're half correct. Music is series of notes
and the spaces between them. Those spaces are called rests, and
even in silence, they can really add motion and life to music. Let's take a
look at how they're notated.

·Like notes, they have specific symbols for specific durations. A whole note
rest is a rectangle descending from the 4th line, and a half note rest is a
rectangle resting on the 3rd line. The quarter note rest is a squiggly line,
and the rest of the rests are an angled bar with the same number of flags as
their equivalent note value. These flags always sweep to the
left.

Part4

Melody

1We now have the basics down:the staff, the
parts of a note, and the basics of notating durations of notes and rests. Make
sure you understand the above, and then let's dive into the fun stuff: reading
music!

2Learn the C scale. The C Major
scale is the first scale we use when teaching how to read music because it's
the one that uses just the white keys. Once you have that locked into your
brain cells, the rest will follow naturally.

·First, we'll show you what it looks like, then we'll show you how to make
sense of it, and begin to read music! Here's what it looks like on the staff.
See the "C scale" above.

·If you'll take a look at the first note, the low C, you'll see that it
actually goes below the staff lines. When that happens, we simply add a staff
line for that note only—thus, the little line through the note head. The lower
the note, the more staff lines we add. But we don't need to worry about that
now.

·The C scale is made up of eight notes. These are the equivalent of the
white keys on the piano.

·You may or may not have a piano handy, but at this point it's important for
you to begin to get an idea of not just what music looks like, but of what it sounds like,
too.

3Learn a little sight singing—or
"solfège." That may sound intimidating, but chances are, you already know it:
it's the fancy way of saying "do, re, mi."

·By learning to sing the notes that you see, you'll begin to develop the
skill of sight reading—a skill that can take a lifetime to perfect, but will be
useful right from the beginning. Let's take a look at that C scale again, with
the solfege scale added. See the "C Scale Solfege 11" above.

·Chances are, you know the Rogers and Hammerstein song "Do-Re-Mi"
from The Sound of Music. If you can sing the "do re
mi" scale, do that now while you look at the notes. If you need a
refresher course, you can hear the song on YouTube.

·Here's a slightly more advanced version, walking up and down the C scale
using the solfège notes. See the "C Scale Solfege 1" above.

·Practice singing Solfege—part II a few times, until it becomes familiar.
The first couple times, read very slowly, so that you can look at each note as
you sing it. The next couple times, substitute the "do re me" for C,
D, E. The goal is to sing the actual notes.

·Remember our note values from before: the high C at the end of the first
line, and the low C at the end of the second line are half notes, while the
rest of the notes are quarter notes. If you imagine yourself walking, again,
there is a note for each step. The half notes take two steps.

4Congratulations, you're now reading
music!

Part5

Sharps, Flats, Naturals, and Keys

1Take the next step.So far we've
covered the very basics of rhythm and melody, and you should possess the basic
skills necessary that you now understand what all those dots and squiggles
represent. While this might get you through basic Flutophone class, there are
still a few more things you'll want to know. Chief among these are key
signatures.

·You may have seen sharps and flats in music: a sharp looks like a hash tag
(♯) and a flat looks like a lowercase B (♭). They are placed to the left of a note head, and
indicate that the note to follow is played a half-step higher (for a sharp), or
a half-step lower (for a flat). The C scale, as we learned, comprises the white
keys on the piano. The sharps and flats are the black keys. Since the C major
has no sharps or flats, it's written like this:

2Whole tones and semitones.In western
music, notes are either a whole tone or a semitone apart. If you look at the C
note on the piano keyboard, you’ll see there’s a black key between it and the
next note up, the D. The musical distance between the C and the D is called a
whole tone. The distance between the C and the black key is called a semitone.
Now, you may be wondering what that black key is called. The answer is, “it
depends.”

·A good rule of thumb is if you are going up the scale, that note is the
sharp version of the beginning note. When moving down the scale, that note
would be the flat version of the beginning note. Thus, if you are moving from C
to D with the black key, it would be written using a sharp (♯).

·In this case, the black note is written as C#. When moving down the scale,
from D to C and using the black note as a passing tone between them, the black
key would be written using a flat (♭).

·Conventions like that makes music a little easier to read. If you were to
write those three notes going up, and used a D♭ instead of a C#, the notation would be written using
a natural sign (♮).

·Notice that there's a new sign—the natural. Whenever you see a natural sign
(♮) that means that the
note cancels any sharps or flats previously written. In this example, the
second and third notes are both D's: the first a D♭, and so the second D, since it goes up
a semitone from the first D, has to have the note "corrected" to show
the right note. The more sharps and flats scattered around a sheet of music,
the more a musician must take in before the score can be played.

·Often, composers that previously used accidentals in previous measures may
put "unnecessary" natural signs to provide clarity for the player.
For example, if a previous measure in a D major piece used an A#, the next
measure that uses an A may be notated with an A-natural instead.

3Understanding key signatures.So far, we've
been looking at the C major scale: eight notes, all the white keys, starting on
C. However, you can start a scale on any note. If you just
play all the white keys, though, you will not be playing a major scale, but
something called a "modal scale," which is beyond the scope of this
article.

·The starting note, or tonic, is also the name of the key. You
may have heard somebody say "It's in the key of C" or something
similar. This example means that the basic scale starts on C, and includes the
notes C D E F G A B C. The notes in a major scale have a very specific
relationship to each other. Take a look at the keyboard above.

·Note that between most notes, there is a whole step. But there is only a
half step (semitone) between E and F, and between B and C. Every major scale
has this same relationship: whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. If you
start your scale on G, for example, it could be written like this:

·Notice the F# near the top. In order to maintain the proper relationship,
the F has to be raised a semitone so that it's a half step from the G, not a
whole step. That's easy enough to read by itself, but what if you started a
major scale in C#? (See above.)

·Now it starts to get complicated! In order to cut down the confusion and
make music easier to read, key signatures were created. Each major scale has a
particular set of sharps or flats, and those are shown at the very beginning of
the music. Looking again at the key of G, we notice that has one sharp—F#.
Instead of putting that sharp next to the F on the staff, we move it all the
way to the left, and it is just assumed from that point on that every F you see
is played as an F#. (See above picture.)

·This sounds, and is played, exactly the same as the G major scale above,
with no key signature. See the Key Signatures section below for a full list of
all key signatures.

Part6

Dynamics and Expression

1Get loud—or get soft!When you listen
to music, you have probably noticed that it's not all at the same volume, all
the time. Some parts get really loud, and some parts get really soft. These
variations are known as "dynamics."

·If the rhythm and meter are the heart of the music, and notes and keys are
the brains, then dynamics are surely the voice of the music. Consider the first
version above.

·On your table, tap out: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8, etc.
(the and is how musicians "say" eighth notes). Make
sure every beat is tapped at the same loudness, so that it so it sounds sort of
like a helicopter. Now take a look at the second version.

·Notice the accent mark (>) above every 4th C note. Tap that out, only
this time, accent every beat that you see the accent mark. Now, instead of a
helicopter, it should sound more like a train. With just a subtle shift in
accent, we completely change the character of the music!

2Play it piano, or fortissimo, or
somewhere in between.Just like you don't always talk at the same level—you modulate your
voice louder or softer, depending on the situation—music modulates in level
too. The way the composer tells the musician what is intended is by using
dynamic markings.

·There are dozens of dynamic markings you may see on a piece of music, but
some of the most common ones you'll find will be the letters f, m,
and p.

·p means "piano," or
"softly."

·f means "forte," or
"loud."

·m means "mezzo," or
"medium." This modifies the dynamic after it, as in mf or mp,
which means "medium loud," or "medium soft."

·The more ps or fs you have, the
softer or louder the music is to be played. Try singing the example above
(using solfège—the first note in this example is the tonic, or "do"),
and use the dynamic markings to notice the difference.

3Get louder and louder and louder, or
quieter and quieter and quieter.Another very common dynamic
notation is the crescendo, and it's corollary, the decrescendo.
They are a visual representations of a gradual change in volume which look like
stretched-out "<" and ">" symbols.

·A crescendo gradually gets louder, and a decrescendo gradually decreases
the volume. You'll notice that, with these two symbols, the "open"
end of the symbol represents the louder dynamic and the closed end represents
the quieter dynamic. For example, if the music directs you to gradually go from
forte to piano, you'll see an f', then a stretched out
">", then a 'p'.

Part7

Advancing

1Keep learning! Learning to read
music is like learning the alphabet. The basics take a little bit to learn, but
are fairly easy, overall. However, there are so many nuances, concepts, and
skills that you can learn that it can keep you learning for a lifetime. Some
composers even go so far as to write music on staff lines that form spirals or
patterns, or the even use no staff lines at all! This article should give you a
good foundation to keep growing!

Part8

Table of Key Signatures

1Learn these key signatures.There is at
least one for every note in the scale—and the savvy student will see that in
some cases, there are two keys for the same note. For example, the key of G#
sounds exactly the same as the key of A♭! When playing the piano—and for the purposes of this
article, the difference is academic. However, there are some
composers—especially those that write for strings—who will suggest that the A♭ is played a little "flatter"
than the G#. Here are the key signatures for the major scales:

·Keys not using sharps or flats: C

·Keys using sharps: G, D, A, E, B, F♯, C♯

·Keys using flats: F, B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭

·As you can see above, as you move through the sharp key signatures, you add
sharps one at a time until every note is played sharp in the key of C♯. As you
move through the flat key signatures, you add flats until every note is played
flat in the key of C♭.

·It may be of some comfort to know that composers usually write in key
signatures that are comfortable for the player to read. D major is a very
common key for string instruments to play because the open strings are closely
related to the tonic, D. There are few works out there that have strings play
in E♭ minor, or brass
playing E major - it's as much a pain for them to write as it is for you to
read.